When it takes 13 starts to win your maiden it's rarely a positive sign for the future but this impressive staying bred winner has enough extenuating circumstances to get us interested.
The horse in question is the John Sargent trained mare Time To Rethink, by So You think out of the Zabeel mare Corkage, that won the 2100 metre maiden at Gosford on Thursday by the best part of four lengths.
For starters, she has only been with Sargent, renowned for his talent with the fairer sex and stayers, for the last five of those 13 runs.
The first two of those were on wet tracks over unsuitably short trips of 1350m and 1500m and then the third run was at a mile on a firmer surface but obviously still short of optimal.
It was last start when up to the 2100m that she showed something better, finishing third and has kept that improvement going into this week with the easy maiden victory.
Time To Rethink's dam, Corkage is an unraced full-sister to two top flight stayers in St Reims and Champagne, both of which found their best with some maturity, and the family also includes NZ Champion Stayer Bonneval.
Corkage has been at best a moderate producer, with Time To Rethink her seventh foal and only third winner but the previous six were all by Danzig line horses, with So You Think bringing something of a point of difference.
So it's a long way to the top from a Gosford maiden and Time To Rethink's obviously no St Reims or Champagne, but she's in an interesting patch of her career, on the improve and heading into the weaker summer months so the next start or two is certainly worth keeping an eye on.